1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a brassiere, a blank for making the brassiere, and to methods of making the brassiere and blank. More specifically, the invention relates to a method for making a seamless brassiere on a circular knitting machine, a blank for making the seamless brassiere, and the seamless brassiere itself.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Brassieres are generally manufactured using full fashioned knitting processes and/or a plurality of cut and sewn pieces, in order to provide a structure which adequately supports of a wearer's breasts. While such processes produce satisfactory products in many respects, they tend to be labor intensive, slow to produce, and thus relatively expensive. Further, because brassieres are worn immediately next to a wearer's body and are generally very close-fitting, many wearers experience discomfort where the seams contact their flesh. Not only can such seams chafe when relative movement occurs between the wearer and the brassiere, but the protuberances which generally accompany seams can press against the wearer's skin uncomfortably, often leaving indentations and/or marks on the wearer's skin when the garment is removed. In addition, because the production of garment seams usually requires the input of labor, one can expect the costs of manufacturing a garment to increase as the number of seams increases.
In order to reduce the costs associated with the manufacture of such cut and sewn articles, attempts have been made to produce brassieres using circular knitting processes. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,531,525 to Richards describes a tubular brassiere blank which is knit on a circular knitting machine, then slit lengthwise, folded over and sewn together at lateral seam lines to form a finished brassiere. The lateral seam lines are thus positioned along opposite sides of the wearer, at positions substantially below the wearer's armpits. Because this tends to be a particularly sensitive area of the body and the tightest-fitting portion of brassieres tends to be the torso encircling portion, such seam lines can cause great discomfort, particularly when the brassiere is sufficiently close-fitting to provide good breast support.
Another method for producing brassieres having a minimal number of seams is described in commonly-assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,479,791 and 5,553,468 to Osborne. Those patents describe the circular knitting of a tubular brassiere blank having a lower torso-encircling welt, integrally knit breast cups and integrally knit shoulder straps. The blank is cut and seamed only at the shoulders, and banding is sewn around the neck opening and arm openings to form a finished brassiere. The resulting brassiere thus has only a minimal number of seams (i.e., only those joining the front shoulder straps to the rear shoulder straps), and the seams are located at a more comfortable position on the wearer's body than those of the Richards patent.
Thus, although the brassiere having seams only on the shoulder straps represents a major improvement over prior art structures, for the sake of wearer comfort and to reduce the labor input required for product manufacture, it would still be desirable to eliminate seams altogether.